Jared Fogle Child Porn Investigation

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Overview

The Jared Fogle Child Porn Investigation was a 2015 investigation by federal authorities into the existence of child pornography at the residence of Jared Fogle, a spokesman for the Subway sandwich chain who is better known as “Subway Jared” or Jared from Subway.

Background

In 2000, Jared Fogle rose to fame after losing 200 pounds by exercising and habitually eating at a Bloomington, Indiana Subway franchise. The company used an ad campaign featuring Jared holding up a pair of pants that he had used before he began losing weight as a method of demonstrating the health of their sandwiches compared to other fast foods. Subway continued the campaign through 2013, filming at least 300 commercials. Jared also had a lucrative career in motivational speaking connected to his weight loss. ^[1]

In 2004, Fogle established the Jared Foundation, dedicated to fighting obesity in American children.^[2] In 2009, Russell Taylor was appointed the executive director of the foundation. Seven years later, on April 29th, 2015, Taylor was arrested on charges of possession of child pornography, child exploitation, and voyeurism, and was found to have over 400 different graphic of child pornography in his possession at the time, all recorded by him at his residence between the years of 2012 and 2015.^[3] Taylor later attempted suicide while in prison.^[4]

Notable Developments

On July 7th, 2015, at 6:30 am, federal and state agents, acting on a federal warrant, entered Fogle’s home in Zionsville, Indiana, and removed several electronic devices, analyzing them in a van parked in the driveway. Fogle was seen exiting his home and entering the van, but by noon he had left with his lawyer and was not under arrest. It was unclear as to whether Fogle himself was under investigation or if the seizings were related to the investigation into Taylor.^[5]

Subway released the following statement:

“We are shocked about the news and believe it is related to a prior investigation of a former Jared Foundation employee. We are very concerned and will be monitoring the situation closely. We don’t have any more details at this point.”

By 2 pm EST on July 7th, Subway had removed all mention of Jared from their web site, including a section called "Jared’s Journey":www.subway.com/subwayroot/freshbuzz/Jared/, which began redirecting to their home page instead.

Online Reaction

Most of the online reaction happened on Twitter, where users tweeted the phrase “Subway Jared” more than 40,000 times in less than 12 hours.^[6] Many of the jokes parodied other Subway marketing tag lines, including the marketing campaign “$5 Footlong”, their slogan “Eat Fresh,” and the use of Jared’s large pre-weight loss pants in their marketing. Users also incorporated images of Chris Hansen from the child pornography vigilante television show To Catch a Predator and his slogan, “Why don’t you take a seat.”

Search Interest

External Sources